Music History
Music has been a great influence in the lives of many people through lyrics and rhythm. There are many different styles that can be performed by either a male or female. Music has been around for many years and is constantly changing. Music has been divided into six periods: Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, and Twentieth Century. Music is written in symbols that represent musical sounds. The system of written symbols is called Musical Notation. "The primary requirement of any notation is that it be suited to the music it represents (Gerboth)." The simplest texture of music is monophonic or single voiced texture. Gregorian chant is an example of monophonic texture. “All music up to about a thousand years ago, of which we have any knowledge, was monophonic (Machlis 295).” Its melody is heard with out a harmonic accompaniment or other vocal lines and attention is focused on the single line (Machlis 295). “To this day the music of the Oriental world - of China, Japan, India, Java, Bali, and the Arab nations -is largely monophonic (Machlis 295).” Polyphonic or many-voiced texture is when two or more melodic lines are combined. Most Medieval polyphonic music is anonymous, though
Machlis, Joseph, “The Enjoyment of Music”, New York: Norton, 1984: 228, 295, 296, 354. Polyphony had to be written in a way that would indicate the rhythm and pitch precisely. color was an important feature of Romantic music ("Historical"). Composers were now able to survive with out being the employee of one person or family and concerts were no longer limited to place drawing rooms. Notation in music, for several centuries, only indicated what pitch (or note) to sing. some composers were so important that their name was preserved along with their music ("Historical"). A cultural break with Medieval tradition was the Renaissance idea of humanism. The first great opera was Orfeo, ("Historical"), by Claudio Monterverdi and was first performed in 1607. Homophonic means "same" or similar sounding. Opera was born around 1600, the beginning of the Baroque era. The Medieval period was the longest and most distant period of musical history and consists of almost a millennium’s worth of music (“Historical”). It was achieved by a group of Florentene writers, artists, and musicians known as the Camerata, a name derived from the Italian word for “salon” (Machlis 354). The growth of the public concert was one of the most important developments of the classical period (“Historical”). It brought the emergence of regular meters that enabled different voices to stay together.
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